Tier 3+ - Accidental Champion (Book 7) - Chapter 29 - I Apologise for the Inconvenience

Palini narrowed his eyes.

Something had changed. Something small, but he was trained to notice such things. The person he was observing—a mere low-level D Grade swordsman—shifted almost imperceptibly. It wasn’t the first strange thing about this man. Palini could have sworn the man’s form had flickered a moment ago, as though a field had engulfed him, but only for the barest moment, happening so swiftly even he couldn’t perceive what it was.

Time dilation, perhaps?

Palini often disliked this particular duty of minding the main portal hub. Honestly, it felt like a complete waste of his abilities, especially since he’d advanced to B Grade only four decades ago. Fortunately, it wasn’t something that required him to act most of the time. And those times that it did require action, lives were saved because of him being there.

Not that he had to physically be inside the main portal hub the majority of the time—only when a flag was raised. Even then, only when he deemed that flag suspicious enough to warrant his personal presence.

This D Grade swordsman had raised a flag the moment he asked the clerk in the sector-to-sector travel area for a pass to Ventorin.

Ventorin was the sector right next door, at least in intergalactic terms. The sector wasn’t considered Orin’s enemy—it was far too weak to be considered an enemy. But they were considered a nuisance. More than once, they’d sent spies into Orin. The Collector was only so brash because he knew the Orin sector had their hands full maintaining their other borders.

It wasn’t that it was illegal to travel to Ventorin. No, Rewke Fouran—the current ruler of the Orin sector, a man Palini actually got to meet when he advanced to B Grade—would never deem travelling somewhere illegal, even if that place was dangerous. Making it illegal would encroach on his citizen’s inalienable rights.

But no one asked to travel to the Ventorin sector. No one smart, anyway.

Spies weren’t the only problem The Collector had sent their way.

Talented Denizens were known to go missing from time to time. Denizens that may well have died in some powerful dungeon, or before returning from the Tower of Champions. Perhaps even in an unsanctioned duel.

Many of these disappearances were sudden and unexplained. It wasn’t unheard of for talented Denizens to get in over their heads and find themselves in dangerous situations they weren’t ready for. Sometimes, that forged them into something stronger. More often than not, they couldn’t bear the heat of that forge, and it melted them down, leaving nothing behind to be found.

But Palini—Head of Security for the Transport Minister—had found evidence that The Collector’s agents had been responsible for at least five kidnappings of high-profile, up-and-coming talented Denizens. If there was proof of five, it stood to reason there were many kidnappings he was unaware of. It made Palini wonder just how many of those other disappearances were suspicious, rather than for the usual reasons.

How The Collector’s agents managed to spirit those captives back to Ventorin was anyone’s guess. However, with enough money, power, or both, there were a thousand ways to make it in and out of a sector. Hell, they could be using slow-travel ships that crawled through the void of space for all he knew.

Only makes my damned job harder.

Thus, why the otherwise ordinary D Grade swordsman had tripped a flag big enough to warrant Palini interrupting his “sparring session” with his wife to teleport to the portal hub and observe the man himself.

There was no record of this D Grade swordsman. That was the first thing Palini had checked. There was a system of surveillance in place around this city, around every city on every world in the Orin sector, as Rewke Fouran took the safety of his citizens seriously. Every guard or patrol officer was tasked with acquiring the Share Memory and Read Memory skills. It was a little-known fact that Communication Stones allowed memories to be shared through them as long as the Denizens connected had the requisite skills.

And so, Palini had been standing there for the ten minutes from when the D Grade bought his pass to when the mage team showed up—Palini had sped the order on that mage team, as he wanted to deal with this issue quickly. In that time, he’d begun reviewing the memories of every guard in town, along with the Sentry Crystals stationed at the tops of every building in the city. First, he’d tracked the past hour, only finding the man once when he appeared suddenly outside the main portal hub.

He’d closely examined the memory from the two guards that had first spotted the man.

Definitely time distortion of some sort, not teleportation.

But that was the only time he found the D Grade swordsman. He had to go back an entire day and still didn’t find him. Through his linked Communication Stone, he contacted the Office of Observation. Within a second of his request, forty-five thousand C Grade patrol officers all around the Orin sector that weren’t otherwise occupied by an important duty had been requisitioned to take over the task of memory sifting.

Grunt-work delegated to thousands of minds, even if lower grade minds, made for a swift investigation.

They searched a week. Nothing. More officers were requisitioned. A month. Six months. Still nothing.

More officers, more memories, going back years, and yet, through all of that, not a single record of this D Grade swordsman could be found in the entirety of the Orin sector before his arrival in front of the main portal hub. There were ways for this to be possible. A glamour was one of them—a powerful one, if he couldn’t pierce it. For Palini, it didn’t really matter. The fact there was no record meant this man was no longer considered a citizen or guest of the Orin sector.

Therefore, the man had no rights.

Palini smiled. The Collector’s agents weren’t usually so sloppy.

Maybe I’ll finally get some answers.

And if he wasn’t an agent? Well, he was certainly up to something.

Before the mage team had manifested the portal, Palini already had this information in hand and acted upon it.

~

Xavier stopped himself from frowning. Stopped himself from having any visible reaction. That man is definitely looking at me.

He narrowed his spiritual sense, pulling it away from the other Denizens in the area, making their auras go dark, and placed the entire weight of it on this one man.

For a moment, he thought that wouldn’t be enough, as he still couldn’t sense the man’s aura—still couldn’t pierce his veil.

Very strange.

He was about to burn some Reality Energy when he hesitated.

Perhaps this will be a good challenge.

Since gaining this ability, he’d never encountered a veil this strong.

So, without taking advantage of burning Reality Energy—only cycling it—Xavier focused his concentration, attaining a state of perfect inner calm. To give him time to work, he cast Time Alteration again, wrapping the field around him.

He stripped away everything else, deactivated his Farscope lens, reformed his mind into a single piece, and ceased cycling everything but his Spirit, Celestial, and Reality energies.

Then, he came at the veil from every single angle.

It took five hours, but eventually he cracked the veil. He didn’t crack it for long, either. He only got a glimpse of the power that lay beneath.

Xavier rocked back on his heels. He hadn’t felt an aura this strong before.

B Grade? Why am I being observed by a B Grade?

While the power of the man was considerable, it felt different to his own. It was difficult for Xavier to gauge their relative strength from the feel of that aura alone, especially when he only felt it for the barest of moments.

Am I stronger than him?

Xavier honestly didn’t know. He hadn’t felt enough B Grade auras to know how to compare—point of fact, this was the only one he’d felt—nor had he faced any B Grades since the Arakashinai Queen.

Winning that fight nearly killed me… But I’m a changed man now.

This man wasn’t the ruler of the Orin sector, that he was sure of. But he still made Xavier wary. Very wary.

The portal to the Ventorin sector had already materialised. All he needed to do was step through it and he would be in a galaxy far, far away—or, well, next door. Still, whoever this man was, he wouldn’t be Xavier’s problem anymore. Xavier wasn’t exactly an unknown entity, and he wasn’t glamouring his face in any way, meaning this man could have been sent by… well, a myriad of different powerful people, many of which Xavier probably wasn’t even aware had an interest in him.

Perhaps I haven’t been as cautious as I should have been…

Xavier cancelled out the time dilation field. He could have simply slowed time within it until he was functioning at the same speed as those outside the field, but he was acutely aware that even a C Grade, if they were powerful enough, would be able to perceive the field’s barrier. Whoever this B Grade was, he hadn’t approached Xavier. That implied he didn’t want to make a scene.

If Xavier disappeared straight through the portal in an instant with the field wrapped around him, the man might panic and try to follow. If Xavier stepped through more casually, however, the mage team should shut the portal down before the B Grade had a chance to move through it.

The portal that manifested was designed to be for a single traveller to pass through, but Xavier knew how portals worked. That just meant they would shut it down after he stepped through, not that others couldn’t pass through it while it was active.

Xavier reactivated his Farscope lens and spread his awareness outward once more, still paying special attention to his observer, then as casually as he could manage, he stepped through the portal to the Ventorin sector.

As he’d turned to face the portal and walked through it, something deeply unsettled him. The man, Palini, smiled proudly.

He looked like a fox that had caught a hare.

~

Xavier stepped out of the portal and into a large, grey room made from hard stone. An oppressive presence pushed down on him the moment he arrived. He felt the sudden influx of spell effects falling onto him, impairing him, though he didn’t understand where they came from.

And something else—runes.

There were thousands of them etched into the grey stone floor, walls, and ceiling. He hadn’t instantly noticed them as there was a single crystal in the centre of the ceiling that unleashed a harsh, bright white light upon the whole room.

The effects were awfully familiar. He had a vivid memory of a C Grade binding specialist with glowing hands laying their palms on his head and making every single one of his cores grey out and blocking his energy channels from even the use of Celestial Energy.

Xavier turned to step back through the portal. It was gone.

There were other things affecting him, not just the spell that blocked his cores and energy channels. His movement was sluggish, slow, though not completely impaired. It felt like gravity had been increased to an exceptional degree.

Xavier didn’t allow himself to panic. This wasn’t the first time he’d been in situations like this. Though the last time a spell that blocked his energy channels and cores was upon him he’d had Time Alteration active. He’d been able to alter time swiftly enough to take away the spell’s effect.

It hadn’t been easy, but he’d managed it.

That wasn’t an option now. He’d deactivated Time Alteration before stepping through. Even if he hadn’t, he felt his other active spells locked out. He still had Bones, in the form of a sword at his hip.

But he couldn’t use Teleport. Couldn’t cast Portal. Couldn’t do any number of things that he should be able to do.

Wonderful.

He turned to face the bare, grey room and stood under the harsh light of the crystal. “I think there’s been a mistake,” he called out. “I bought a pass to the Ventorin sector. Not wherever”—he gestured around—“this is.”

Xavier raised an eyebrow at the empty room. When a few seconds passed, he sighed. He figured someone would be listening to him, wherever this was. If so, they hadn’t deemed to respond. He started tapping his foot impatiently. He might not be panicking, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t frustrated. Someone—that B Grade man, no doubt—had altered his portal’s destination.

Taking him here.

He hadn’t been idle since he’d stepped in here. He’d split his mind into various parts, each of them working on a different piece of the puzzle that was the predicament he’d walked straight into. Spell effects were probed. Energy channels were examined. Runes were inspected. And his movement under these new constraints was observed.

Xavier had only tapped the floor four times before someone appeared directly in front of him, flickering into existence.

Teleport. Or a similar spell. Does that mean people can teleport into this room, but not out of it? Perhaps only those with the requisite permissions…

Unsurprisingly, it was the non-descript B Grade observer who materialised. His face was expressionless as he stared at Xavier. In front of him, a steel table with a chair on either side appeared from a Storage Ring. The man sat, then gestured at the chair opposite.

“Sit.”

He no longer wore casual clothes. Now, he was fully armoured and had a sword at his hip. The armour looked medium to heavy. The sword was a hand-and-a-half sword—much like the form Bones was currently in.

Xavier remained standing. “Don’t I get a phone call?”

The armoured man raised an eyebrow.

“A lawyer?”

“I sense you are making jokes, though as I don’t understand your references, I can’t be sure. Either way, it’s clear from looking at you that you aren’t taking this situation seriously. Now sit, or I will make you sit.”

The man said all this very calmly, and why wouldn’t he? He was in a position of power. A B Grade with a D Grade across from him. A D Grade that was hindered by several spells and rune effects. From his perspective, there was nothing Xavier could do.

Xavier hadn’t yet decided whether the man was right or not.

He sat. “I guess you’re the bad cop,” he muttered with a sigh. “Any chance we’re still waiting on the good one?”

In the background, his split minds were still working, puzzling out the problem of his energy channels, probing to see what did and didn’t work. An option or two had already become evident—things these spells and runes didn’t account for. Things they couldn’t account for.

The man didn’t react to his comment. Instead, he raised a hand, hovering it above the table. A pouch appeared and fell to the steel surface with a clinking thud.

“What’s that?” Xavier asked.

“A refund for the sector-to-sector portal pass you purchased.” The B Grade smiled for the first time since he entered the room. It was the same smile he’d worn when Xavier had stepped through the portal. “On behalf of Orin’s Transport Minister, I apologise for the inconvenience this redirected portal may have caused to your travel plans.”

Xavier eyed the pouch. Orin’s Transport Minister… When Xavier had first spotted the man, he’d had no idea who might be following him, no idea if he was an agent of an entity known to him or not. That he’d managed to redirect the portal pointed to two things: Either the man was so powerful he could just do that, and Xavier had somehow missed the portal being manipulated; or he’d been in a position to order the mage team to redirect it.

Clearly, it had been the latter. But why? He figured he’d be safe enough in this sector. He certainly hadn’t broken any laws. The clerk had warned him off going to Ventorin but hadn’t told him he couldn’t.

Xavier pushed the coin pouch across the table. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather the apology be in the form of the portal I paid for.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

“You don’t seem afraid,” Xavier replied. “Or sincere, for that matter. Am I under arrest?”

“No. You would have to be a citizen or a guest of Orin to be under arrest. There is no record of you in our fair sector, which means you are neither. This also means you don’t have the right to be arrested, or any rights at all, for that matter.” The man’s smile became more sinister. “Which makes my job a hell of a lot easier.”